Watcher Academy
by M.R. Zero
Summary: Post-Chosen Buffyverse Spin-off: Prior to full-blown Watcherdom, there's the learning curve, enter the Academy, which in contrast to the Council has not ever been blown up. Yea! Fun Fact; no Buffy characters in this


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**Episode One: Tuition Fees**

**Chapter One: ****There Is A Dream**

_"The reality of it is the night was dark and draining away all's energy. It was a crummy day with dark clouds making day seem like night, and night ever more night. All dark and heavy, very fitting to my mood. The mood I've been carrying with me for months now, me, the "rebelling" teenager, who's alone when solely alone and in a crowd of hundreds alike. I'm just always alone."_

_ ¤ _

Thunder claps crisply through the dense dark clouds, as though ripping the very fabric of reality, innerving very few but annoying many in the ranch of houses on the casual, ordinary street of Whittleworth, Britain. As we're creeping in the living room, right through the large window drown in pearly raindrops, we shamelessly spy on a conversation between a father and a son.

Both seemed far into their dialogue, and the son – the teenager – looked all the more intense as though reaching out for every of his father's words like palpable objects he'd be able to fiddle with his fingers. It was a revelation no doubt, something the patriarch was telling for the very first time. Harrell looked at his all-time hero with love, surprise and admiration.

"You're not going back to school in fall," he said conclusively, the handsome older man, the father, with a full-blown abundance of joy bursting out of him as he said so.

The boy was sceptic, distorting his youthful traits with anguish. He would be attending no school, why was his father ecstatic over this? School is draining his life away, but he needed education, he thought to himself, admitting being the first step to recovery. Because there was something to recover from, that something was that high school was murdering his spirit. Every day more than the last, his moral was being crushed.

"It's been tough ever since Ty's death for you there. So I worked, worked and worked and... you're going to the Academy!!"

"Oh my god, dad!"

He felt himself shout aloud his contempt, but his mind was still in denial in this rapid change of events. "Are you in any way kidding?" he asked quite rhetorically, before springing into his dad's arms, the men in a tight embrace, celebrating both love and accomplishment.

"You still want to, right?" Talon had asked with a grown playfulness to his tone. "Alright," he sighed, letting in there's more to this. "Sit down, Harrell. There's something you need to know... It's about your mother."

The revelations were many if not too much for Harrell, who was walking along ignorantly and blindly with his father's fast bracing. As the boys settle their affairs, we retract through the window, letting the news about the boy's mother in a strong state of ambiguity.

_ ¤ _

The sun is gleaming on the fine sunny day Britain seldom has. We're flying above heads of students swarming a wide, large and vintage campus, and in the sea of people is walking Harrell, with a spring in his step, gazing heart-warmingly at all that's around him with a smile to make you melt. He plays back in his head the genuine sense of pride he felt from his dad when he said to him; "My son, a Watcher." Talon had wished to give his son that life-long dream ever since he first told his tale of when he, too, was a watcher-to-be. If you were to believe he'd say the truth, which none believed but acknowledged with satisfaction of a good story coming to term, there was a fight where he saved the Academy from a vampire king. The School Board saw no heroics in this, misconstruing his act as an undeniable act of teen angst channelled into violence. Of course... But as Harrell walked onward still, heading farther and farther from us, it is now clear to all where he is, but as if to reassure us, we come down on a sign that writes 'Blackwell Watcher Academy', with Harrell way ahead now, swallowed up by the masses of hopeful young men hoping to be one day Watchers.


End file.
